Nigeria joins the rest of the world to commemorate the 2024 World Environment Day. This year, the focus is on Land restoration, stopping desertification and building resilience. The slogan and hashtag of the day “Our Land. Our Future, We are #GenerationRestoration” highlights the focus of this year’s theme.
The World Environment Day is celebrated annually on the 5th of June. This day is set aside to highlight environmental challenges, encourage awareness and capacity building for the protection of the environment.
A list of events organized by partners around the globe to commemorate this day begins from April 2024 and ends in June 2024. On June 6th which marks the final event, an “Observance event” will take place at United Nations headquarters in New York to mark the day. According to their campaign website, the event organized in collaboration with the permanent mission of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations, will focus on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience, under the slogan “Our Land. Our Future.”
In Nigeria, from the arid climate in the East to the dry weather in the North, all parts of Nigeria show different cases of environmental crisis; as such, they require different management systems.
The North-Eastern part of Nigeria faces great challenges and crisis of the environment from gully erosion, desertification, high wind velocity, pollution, drought, flooding, lead poisoning, solid waste mismanagement, desert encroachment, land degradation, and urbanization to mention just a few.
A report by the Federal Ministry of Environment on National Action Programme To Combat desertification estimated that between 50% to 75% of Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara States in Nigeria are being affected by desertification.
The report states that these states, with a population of about 27 million people account for about 38 per cent of the country’s total land area.
“In these areas, population pressure resulting in over grazing and over exploitation of marginal lands has aggravated desertification and drought. Entire villages and major access roads have been buried under sand dunes in the extreme northern parts of Katsina, Sokoto, Jigawa, Borno, and Yobe States,” the reports noted.
The report however, said the Federal Government, within the overall framework of protecting the environment in Nigeria, has given prominence to the twin environmental problems of drought and desertification.
These environmental and climate issues did not start yesterday but has unfortunately grown immensely.
In Zamfara, according to Pure Earth’s analysis, 11,000 People are affected due to lead poisoning and 12,000 of those affected are under 6 years old. 47 villages were analyzed and 30,000 residents had to be displaced due to mining activities in that area, with the major means of Infection being through ingestion and inhalation.
In Sokoto, the lack of unauthorized dumpsites and poor waste management has led to cases of flooding, environmental pollution and blockage of drainage channels. Research conducted by Alhassan Mansur, a researcher at Sokoto State University, published on ‘Research Gate’ shows that residential wastes account for 53.5% of solid waste in the state.
As land restoration is a “key pillar of the UN Decade on Ecosystem restoration (2021-2030),” the United Nations and all participating countries call for the protection and revival of ecosystems around the world which is critical to achieve sustainable development goals.
